Abolition Media Response to Kolektiva Censorship

From Abolition Media

As the genocidal campaign against Palestinians continues, so have the outcries from supposed anarchists in the West against any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance. Recently, a post by the Kolektiva moderation team called anarchists who seek to learn from the Palestinian Resistance “deeply delusional” and “dripping with performative machismo.” While our platform was not directly referenced, the same post linked to an article called “Abolition Media’s Authoritarian Entryism,” a hit piece on our media site. We therefore find it necessary to make our intentions clear and to investigate exactly why a site claiming to be anarchist would slander coverage of the Resistance, even if our accusers are too cowardly to mention us by name.

Whether these anti-Resistance “anarchists” are merely ignorant or are intentionally misrepresenting our position, their reasoning is imbued with the liberal Zionist thinking typically found in New York Times editorials. For instance, Kolektiva condemns those who “openly celebrate Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the attack carried out by Palestinian militants on October 7th 2023.” Another recent article in a similar vein, “Towards Another Uprising” refers to October 7th as “the bloody incursion of Hamas into ‘Israel.'” This repudiation of October 7th betrays an opposition toward all forms of resistance of the oppressed. Like the revolts of enslaved people in Nat Turner’s uprising or the anti-colonial revolutions in Haiti and Algeria, October 7th broke through the normality of the daily humiliations and the oppressive violence that permeates everyday existence in a settler colonial society. While this anti-colonial rebellion may not neatly fit the criterion of purity demanded by the Kolektiva armchair critics, the hysteria and outright lies parroted from corporate media about October 7th is a massive endorsement of US State propaganda.

Kolektiva has accused Abolition Media of being “uncritical cheerleaders for authoritarian Islamist paramilitary actors.” This is a distortion of our position about publishing Palestinian Resistance statements, and the factions who are supporting their goals. While publishing such statements should not need an explanation for self-respecting anarchists, we published our reasoning when we wrote a “Statement on Editorial Decisions Regarding Palestine and Anti-Colonial Resistance.” In the statement, we wrote, “As a news source for revolutionary movements we consider it vital to spread the perspectives and action reports of anti-colonial resistance groups, regardless of whether we, as anarchists, are in complete agreement with their politics.” Our stance remains the same today.

Historically, anarchists have formed alliances and expressed solidarity with anti-colonial groups, regardless of differences of ideology. During the Spanish civil war, anarchists formed a pact with the Moroccan Action Committee and the anarchist Pierre Besnard even proposed breaking the anti-colonial leader Abd El Krim out of a French prison on the island of Réunion. Much like the leaders of Hamas, Abd El Krim was a brilliant guerrilla tactician and a devout Muslim, who used Islamic principles to help unify an anti-colonial alliance that proved quite effective in defeating better armed French and Spanish colonizers in the Rif region of Morocco. His victories led to the creation of an autonomous Republic of the Rif in 1921.

Decades later, anarchist BLA fighter Kuwasi Balagoon expressed solidarity with international anti-imperialist struggles, writing, “Imperialism must expand or die, and even as the pigs escalate their military and political offensive, they have lost their grip increasingly throughout this world, despite their wolf tickets, because the peoples of Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Libya, Angola, Tanzania, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Grenada, and other lands have put their heads and hearts together to devise no nonsense methods to drive the Americans out. If we do the same, we will obtain the same results. In fact, we will obtain greater results, because our liberation would mean a greater decline to imperialism than any of the previous people’s victory and reaction would be weakened to a corresponding extent.”

Speaking from Attica prison in New York state Balagoon euphorically praised Hezbollah’s first attack against the US war machine in Lebanon stating, “I think it’s beautiful! I thought that thing with the truck (the truck bombing in 1982) was incredible… we have a lot to learn from them and we will.”

In the tradition of Kuwasi Balagoon, revolutionary anarchists today are calling for studying the tactics and strategic victories of anti-colonial Resistance in Palestine and applying lessons to Resistance within the belly of the beast. These calls have been dismissed by Kolektiva as “delusional”, “reckless” and “dripping with performative machismo.” It is not delusional to apply anti-colonial tactics within the heart of the empire. It has been only four years since the Minneapolis precinct was set on fire during the George Floyd uprising and in the ’60s and ’70s, these types of armed revolutionary actions were nearly everyday occurrences. To consider these actions to be reckless comes from a position of attachment to the comforts afforded to these so-called anarchists in the West. These comforts can be directly linked to their complicity in the genocide in Gaza and more broadly to the pillaging of the global South and the racism that is used to justify these imperialist conquests. Moreover, to say that calls for direct action against Zionist targets are “dripping with performative machismo” is an insult to all those women who have taken up armed resistance against Zionism, including figures like Layla Khaled and Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, as well as slander to all those female, trans and non-binary anarchist revolutionaries around the world who are committed to fight for the movement.

Finally, Kolektiva asserts that anarchists who propose taking revolutionary actions in support of the Palestinian people “promote a ‘unity of fields’ strategy that imagines themselves as a fifth column of the Iranian military.” Kolektiva is here duplicating a common Zionist smear tactic, asserting that the Palestinian Resistance and all those who express solidarity with the Resistance are controlled by Iran. One need only to read the many first person accounts from Gaza and the West Bank to understand that the Resistance groups of Palestine are a genuinely homegrown phenomenon, supported by and totally enmeshed in their communities. Furthermore, the regional Resistance to imperialism emerged specifically out of Western excesses in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. It is woeful to see that Kolektiva would try to deploy the ‘outside agitator’ narrative to discredit the resistance and its supporters. This misunderstanding, again, stemming from US and Zionist propaganda, is something Abolition Media is committed to countering with its articles.

Kolektiva is using these belligerent accusations as an excuse to censor anti-imperialist viewpoints from their social media platform, a practice which is the opposite of what anarchists have fought for historically. How far they have come from the legacy of anarchists who, like Emma Goldman in the context of American nationalism during World War I, fought against State censorship.

The counter-revolutionary position of these so-called anarchists who censor support for Palestinian Resistance, coupled with the condemnation by some of these same “anarchists” of Michael Reinoehl for taking up arms against a fascist during the George Floyd uprising, and the clear support many of them have maintained for Ukrainian fascism makes it clear that it would be foolish for Black and Brown people to gamble their freedom with these people. We would like to be very clear to comrades from colonized communities, internally and externally to the imperial core — be extraordinarily careful in your relations with this tendency, as it is fundamentally aligned with the interests of white supremacy, colonial arrogance, and the Euro/American genocidal drive for power consolidation. While enjoying the economic fruits of Palestinian genocide and the brutal destruction of left-wing movements in Central and South America, Kolektiva, and other “anarchists” in the West carry blood on their hands with their clear support for one of the last settler colonial projects in the world.

As the divides between settler and colonized, right and left become more stark in the current political climate, more and more supposed revolutionaries will be forced to show their hands and clearly articulate their positions. It will no longer be possible to hide behind the mask of insufficient ideologoical purity to hide an essentially colonial position. It is a good thing that we will be able to see everyone for who they actually are. At Abolition Media we are proud to uphold the anarchist revolutionary tradition and unapologetically stand on the side of those who are fighting Western hegemony and we invite everyone in good faith to join us on this trajectory.

Further reading:

 
The Palestinian Revolution and the Rift in the International Movement — Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis
 
Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis: Response to the Week of Revenge for Comrade Michael Forest Reinoehl, Who Was Murdered by Government Order
 
Abolition Media Statement on Editorial Decisions Regarding Palestine and Anti-Colonial Resistance
 
Towards the Last Intifada: A Statement on Palestine by Anarchists
 
What We Did on 7 October 2023 — Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis
 
The Question of Hamas and the Left

Comments

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 21:00

Praising militarism, mass-murder, abduction and torture of civilians that the October 7th attack meant, in the name of "anti-oppression" and "anti-imperialism", is dogshit authoritarianism no matter who does it, and contrary to anarchist goals and values.

Hamas and especially the Islamic Jihad are fascist, reactionary organizations that got nothing to bring for a liberatory project whatsover. Moreso, they're run by capitalist slimebags living in posh hotels in Qatar and Dubai, when not in Riyadh. Even if they'd succeed in destroying Israel that'll be to replace it with another Islamic gangster dictatorship for their own crowd of retrograde scum, that are the Arab equivalent to the gang in the White House now.

Anarchists aren't your tools, tools.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 10:58

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

But apparently this post from Franklin López isn't considered "Propaganda from politicians or political parties that seek to win elections." Good to see where the Kolektiva moderation team's priorities are.

"I never thought I'd be saying this, but this time is different. If you live in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, you must go out and vote. It's not a vote for the capitalist pro-zionist cop, but a small gesture to help avert catastrophe."

https://kolektiva.social/@franklinlopez/113391212435161118

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 12:25

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

YES, Kolektiva has a strong bias against the fascist fucktards that just took power, which can include a level of tolerance of people who incited others to vote against them.

SO WHAT?

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 13:53

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Kolektiva supports a popular front with racist liberal American imperialists who are genociding Palestine and with the Ukrainian army despite its fascist units (and use of Israeli weaponry) but is against so much as sympathy with organizations that oppose American and Israeli imperialism. Got it. Thank you for your service to the American, Ukrainian and Israeli nation-states. This is an "anarchist" site with "community-moderated discussion" about "anarchist" stuff, you know, like explicit calls to participate in the State and its institutions, as long as they're Western and not Eastern. Anarcho-campism against the other campists.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 20:39

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"Kolektiva supports a popular front with racist liberal American imperialists who are genociding Palestine and with the Ukrainian army despite its fascist units"

But where?

You have no idea how assertions are yuge these days, especially on these platforms run by Trump's personal tech triumvirate. So you should know better... or bust!

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 21:42

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

...just goes to show you that even long term "green insurrecto anti-civ, etc." anarchists, deep down, in their heart of hearts, really are just the shock troops/militant wing of the Democrat Party; just a bunch of fucking liberal-democrats, when all is said and done...

"You must go out and VOTE!"

LMAO!

The absolute state of anarchy rn.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 08:00

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Frank Lopez was a social democratic phoney for years... there ain't much surprise here. I dared venturing to that World Social Forum several years back and he was there as a host. Yes, the stupid WSF.

But what would you expect from Kolektiva to do about it, other than doing exactly the censoring Elon and Zuck would do in their cesspits? Or have they censored your reactions to his stupid post on the platform?

anon noir (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 21:42

So let me get this stupid binary thinking straight... If you oppose the awful action of Group-1 (while fully comprehending how it reached that point) and you oppose the awfulness of Group-2 (who largely drove Group-1 to this awful action), you therefore must be sided with Group-2 and imbued with their thinking? Yeah, fuck off.

This is the same authoritarian "if you're not with us you're with the 'terrorists'" bullshit we see the world over. We should NOT be seeing this kind of nonsense from so-called anarchists.

I despise red "anarchists" so fucking much.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 09:31

In reply to by anon noir (not verified)

If you don't like red anarchists you could always go to Ukraine and join the fascist-sympathetic anarchists in Right Sector, Azov and Brotherhood units. Or go to Rojava and fight alongside the United States military. Anarchy means unlimited options.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 10:14

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Riiight because if you don't like red anarchists it MUST mean you're a fascist OR a nationalist! MAKES SoOOO much sense, brow!

Eat shit, bootlicker.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 10:46

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

If you had read slower you might have caught that I said unlimited options not one option. Another of your options would to be to cry about posts in support of Palestinian groups but not cry about posts in favor of the Ukrainian and NATO war efforts. More options too. Lots of freedom in the West. Many different burgers to choose from, for example. Many soda pops.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 10:53

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

If YOU had read slower you would have seen they said "OR" which defeats your entire smug reply. Go wash your hands with all the many different kinds of fuck you, centrist scum! This is an anarchist website.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 06:42

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

It's a multipart thread beginning here
https://kolektiva.social/@moderation/113363781261301067

The relevant section is from https://kolektiva.social/@moderation/113363791188793833 and is copy-pasted below

2) October 7th and the “Axis of Resistance”

Since the attacks of October 7th, 2023, and particularly since the Israeli state responded with a genocidal slaughter in Gaza, there’s been an increase in popular support for Hamas and for the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ led by Iran, and supported by the foreign operations branch of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Al-Quds Force. Recent Israeli atrocities in Lebanon have seen a similar spike in support for Hezbollah. We consider this to be an understandable and predictable result of Israel’s ongoing military atrocities, given that these armed factions are often presented as the only forces willing and able to engage in effective armed resistance to the Israeli state's murderous actions in the region. The horrifying and existential realities of war exert a tremendous pressure on people to cast aside political differences and 'pick a side'. And clearly, many people have chosen to take the side of those seen to be fighting on behalf of Palestine, against Israel and their imperialist backers in the west.

Within this context, and under the pretext of building increased global anti-imperialist and anti-colonial solidarity, a current within the anarchist movement has for months been re-publishing reports and communiques from armed Palestinian groups, along with news articles that glorify the 'Axis of Resistance' and openly celebrate Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the attack carried out by Palestinian militants on October 7th 2023.

Over the past year, these posts have generated hundreds of reports. We’ve deleted some of the more egregious examples, but we left most of them alone. This has been a source of continual debate and disagreement within the moderation team, and with several of our users. Members of the Kolektiva mod team were initially sympathetic to arguments made about the importance of sharing information that is otherwise heavily censored by western media sources (such as reports about armed attacks on Israeli soldiers in Gaza) even when that information comes from heavily biased media sources or from groups that we find politically abhorrent. We also recognize that when we use our position to delete posts on a certain topic, or from certain sources, we are effectively censoring discourse and removing the ability of people to discuss and debate these ideas on this platform. Sometimes, this censorship is warranted (we aren't interested in promoting debates among the finer points of fascism, for example), but in this case we're talking about setting the parameters for discussion around one of the most brutal military campaigns in modern history and a crucial focal point for global anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance. So we've generally opted to take a fairly light touch, and to have faith that our majority-anarchist userbase would mitigate the drift towards glorifying militarism, martyrdom & war.

However, over time we have grown increasingly uncomfortable as we’ve watched several of our users, including comrades whose work we have respected for years, along with their affiliated counter-info sites, gradually transform into uncritical cheerleaders for authoritarian Islamist paramilitary actors like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, and totalitarian states like Syria and Iran - whose own security forces and assorted death squads have bombed, gassed, shot, detained, tortured and brutally slaughtered hundreds of thousands of revolutionaries and political dissidents across the region in the years since the Arab Spring.

These are reactionary and repressive institutions. This fact may be inconvenient for those who now see them as agents of liberation and Palestinian self-determination, but it is not lost on the millions of people whose calls for freedom were silenced by barrel bombs in Aleppo, or whose friends and comrades were shot by IRGC proxies in Baghdad or Basra, or executed for rising up against the murder of Jina Amini.

In the lead up to October 7th, there were texts circulating online calling for western anarchists to learn from the ‘revolutionary tactics’ and organizational structures of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and to use these lessons to target individual Zionists with ‘direct action’. These posts are often marked with an inverted red triangle, which has come to serve as a pro-Hamas dog whistle.

Not only are these posts deeply delusional and dripping with performative machismo, but they are also reckless. They blur the line between combatant and non-combatants and appropriate anarchist aesthetics and discourse to promote a 'unity of fields' strategy that imagines themselves as a fifth column of the Iranian military. As anarchists, we have serious concerns with this political trajectory and where it is heading - to put it mildly - and we’re no longer willing to platform these sorts of 'political interventions' on our instance.

Moving forward, we will be deleting these posts on sight and requesting that Kolektiva.social accounts associated with counter-info sites avoid re-publishing these sorts of posts on Kolektiva, or else find themselves a new home instance.

For more anarchist critiques of militarism in this current context please see:
   
1) Hostages to the Gun: On Militancy and Militarism
https://north-shore.info/2024/10/04/hostages-of-the-gun-on-militancy-an…
   
2) Abolition Media's Authoritarian Entryism
https://cola.blackblogs.org/2024/03/22/abolition-medias-authoritarian-e…

lumpy (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 07:40

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

thanks for putting everything on the table, appreciate you!

kolektiva's position is a breath of fresh air too, glad to see like minds still clinging to sanity in these times. i do not envy those mods... *shudder*

anon (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 00:57

Abolition media are NOT anarchists, but some kind of authoritarians communist. Their ideological basis root in marxisms, maoism and so on. They just like anarchism's direct action capacity, but not our ideas of total liberation.
See : Abolition Media’s Authoritarian Entryism
https://cola.blackblogs.org/2024/03/22/abolition-medias-authoritarian-e…
(they quote this text, but, as for Kolektiva's post, they do not link it... that's fair play!)

lumpy (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 07:58

In reply to by anon (not verified)

i agree and wonder what else because the vibes are getting so creepy: things like audience capture and weirder psy-op possibilities like the red-brown alliance maybe? are there just more tech-bros lurking behind every curtain?!

that influencer with the headscarf smells like an astroturf campaign to me and her videos are suddenly everywhere

Tim Declercq (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 10:31

In reply to by anon (not verified)

A blog that complains that RedFish is affiliated with a Russian TV channel while linking to CNN to make that argument is quite ironic, especially when you bother to actually read that CNN article to find that it never even mentions RedFish (or RedStream) at all in the first place. Seems like typical Western liberalism: non-Western media = bad, Western media = good.

At the end of the blog they further link to an article titled Always Against The Tanks (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-always-against-…) suggesting it as further reading, where we find a chapter titled "Is Genocide Denial Anti-Imperialist Now?" containing claims like this: "It’s a fucking outrage that I have to even give examples again, especially as these are the most well-documented, well-researched, and widely available instances. But here we go. {...} 10 million deaths resulted from the 1932–3 deliberate, man-made famine."

Well, too bad for the author that these things are indeed well-documented and well-researched, and especially that it is easy enough to look up that research by actual proper historians, where one can read things like: "I have found that the most reasonable estimates of mortality rates caused by the famine in Ukraine (based on these new datasources analysed by myself, Davies, Vallin et al) place the figure around 3.5 million. Attempts to claim the largest genocide in the world with 7 to10 million victims are hard to justify." and "The state showed no signs of a conscious attempt to kill lots of Ukrainians and belated attempts that sought to provide relief when it eventually saw the tragedy unfolding were evident." (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0960777318000358) In short, this notion that the famine was "deliberate" and caused "10 million deaths" are nothing but the mythos of Ukrainian nationalists and further promoted by its Western-liberal supporter. Here manipulatively presented under a header of "genocide denial" - as if one is engaging in genocide denial by rejecting nationalist myths with no basis in reality - and clearly hoping nobody would call the bluff on those claims of "well-researched example" and actually go and look up that research.

This whole thing just reads like the whining Western liberals who read too much CNN, displaying all the Western supremacist undertones common in that political camp, from complaining that RedFish is affiliated with Russian media while linking people to CNN instead and not seeing any irony in this, to spreading anti-communist myths from nationalists and even nazis (this particular myth was and still is quite popular among the OUN and its offshoots in the diaspora, as well as having been used by the NSDAP itself).

If this is what Kolektiva is basing itself on to support their censorship then I can understand Abolition Media's remark of "be extraordinarily careful in your relations with this tendency, as it is fundamentally aligned with the interests of white supremacy, colonial arrogance, and the Euro/American genocidal drive for power consolidation"

lumpy (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 11:17

In reply to by Tim Declercq (not verified)

what a lurching, awkward pivot away from the actual topic towards *checks notes* re-litigating the holodomor for the 10k+ time... as if anyone wants to do that OR it has anything to do with anything outside of weirdass tankie echochambers online

nice snowjob ya got there! sure would be a shame if it doesn't snow much anymore cuz climate change

Tim Declercq (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 11:33

In reply to by lumpy (not verified)

Dude I literally quoted it from the article that was linked to. If you don't like the subject being discussed then don't bring it up, sounds easy enough, no? Kolektiva is the one who linked to it in support of their censorship, not me.

lumpy (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 09:48

In reply to by Tim Declercq (not verified)

if i don't like the subject ... then they shouldn't have brought it up? do you hear yourself? do you read after you type? the issue here is refusal to nuance about october 7th, preferring the dim-wit, binary worldview of campism. that's the issue.

you're trying to change the subject and run off in to a famous old swamp of a debate. it's not working. good day sir, you lose, etc

Tim Declercq (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 11:20

In reply to by lumpy (not verified)

I'm free to respond to any claim I want and I do not need your approval to do so, it's that simple. You are of course free to whine about it as much as you want, but I will attach as much importance to that as it deserves, which is none.

Also, no the issue is not "nuance about october 7th etc", the issue is about censorship. Unless you think that anything that you don't agree with should be censored? It is notable that you and Wayne's responses to the question of censorship are *solely* reagarding whether you yourselves agree with Abolition Media. So let me ask you (and Wayne) directly: Do you think that anything you personally disagree with should be censored from a social media network? If not, why do you keep arguing about whether you personally agree with Abolition Media instead of arguing about the actual issue under consideration, which is censorship?

Tim Declercq (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 11:39

In reply to by Tim Declercq (not verified)

Come to think of it, these questions of censorship could serve as a good test for authoritarianism, because they always involve two quite distinct things:

1) Do I personally agree with X?

2) Do I think X should be censored?

Where I will posit that those with authoritarian tendencies, when presented with question 2, will argue question 1 instead, as if point 2 automatically follows from point 1. That is, they think that convincing people of point 1 is, in and of itself, a sufficient argument for point 2 because they implicitly believe that only what they themselves agree with should even be allowed to exist in the information space in the first place.

As far as I'm concerned, point 1 has little to nothing to do with point 2, and the reason I've been arguing against Kolektiva's decision in these comments has nothing to do with me agreeing or disagreeing with Abolition Media's general position or writings.

lumpy (not verified) Mon, 01/27/2025 - 09:12

In reply to by Tim Declercq (not verified)

... SIGH no. the issue in the writing, the given reason by kolektiva, which you either didn't understand or are trying to steer the discussion away from.

it's about failure to nuance about collective punishment and targeting noncombatants in war. it's about how you can possibly have liberatory politics while making any space for that. that's THE issue that many, MANY people are miserably failing to understand in the current discourse and it's very embarrassing for all of them. that's not my opinion, it's an objective statement about millions of internet arguments and media coverage since the oct 7 attack.

if you claim you have liberatory politics or ethics of any kind, you can't make it make any sense without cutting off your own nose to spite your face

that's the stated issue, by kolektiva, resummarized by me. clear now? ffs tim ...

Tim Declercq (not verified) Mon, 01/27/2025 - 12:53

In reply to by lumpy (not verified)

Oh I understood Kolektiva's ad-hoc rationalization just fine. If something violates this test and it is directed against US hegemony (such as AM republishing Hamas and others' statements) then it is to be censored, if it violates the same test but supports US hegemony (such as Frank Lopez of IGD telling people to go out of their way to support Democratic Party control of the US government, or several writings of Crimethinc along similar lines) then it isn't to be censored. You can hammer on about how AM was indeed violating this test (few if any would dispute that) all you want, it doesn't stop Kolektiva's censoring from being ad-hoc and selective. Unless you believe the US Democratic Party is any less guilty of these things than Hamas is? Because if you do, boy do I have stories to tell you about networks of CIA black sites, torture camps, drone strikes in Muslim countries, and so much more.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/27/2025 - 15:18

In reply to by lumpy (not verified)

Is this music video okay because it's about targeting Russian combatants (possibly conscripts) with Turkish drones instead of noncombatants or what?

https://kolektiva.media/w/j2pnoZAjR8shfVQ2vihbmN

Fascinating to learn from you, Lumpy the Troll, that the Ukrainian and Turkish states and Turkish arms companies could possibly "have liberatory politics or ethics of any kind". Thank you for your service. I long to know more National Anarchism Totally Okay.

Tim Declercq (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 11:48

In reply to by lumpy (not verified)

Also, there is nothing to "re-litigate" here, the actual historical research is quite clear on the famine not being intentional and definitely not having caused "10 million deaths", even Robert Conquest (you know, the guy who worked for the Information Research Department and who was the main proponent of this stuff outside of the nationalist/nazi scene) himself has rescinded his views on this after having been confronted with the archival material. The only ones who keep bringing this up are self-proclaimed anarchists who seem to like to work as extras to Ukrainian nationalists, and who are apparently the first ones Kolektiva thinks of linking to when supporting their censorship decisions, which is after all where I quoted it from. So, yeah, not a good look for Kolektiva there - especially with the manipulative way of how it's being presented under a header of so-called "genocide denial."

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 08:57

Kolektiva just went higher in my esteem with this. They show being consistent to anarchist principles in not white-knighting fascist organizations that *play their part* in the oppression of people in Gaza and the West Bank. These groups only grew strong and wealthy due to this lack of criticism in solidarity that makes anyone under the Palestine banner the "freedom fighter" or "the Resistance".

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 09:39

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Good to know you think the NATO boosters at Kolektiva are more "anarchist" than the real anarchists who supported Moroccan and Algerian independence, Kuwasi Balagoon, etc. Wish you put your real name instead of anon so I could stay the fuck away from you and all your moronic friends in real life.

Vacuumflowers (not verified) Thu, 01/30/2025 - 23:17

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

If you want to avoid anarchist opinions and positions because you disagree with anarchist opinions and positions, then your only option is to avoid all anarchist spaces and events? That way you won't come across any anarchists!

You're welcome and thanks for letting me educate you! :)

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 13:01

The 'anarchist' sentiment from the euro nationalist bent of anarchy is reaching its death bed. Anyone familiar with the scene can attest that it's largely a what 90-95 percent white movement at this point. Theyve largely succeeded in pushing out non white people to the degree that trump would likely be envious. And as they keep doubling down we are likely seeing the end of the usefulness of this project for oppressed people. It's to remain an affluent project for increased freedom for the white settler class.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 12:57

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"Anyone familiar with the scene can attest that it's largely a what 90-95 percent white movement at this point."
That's wonderful, because the broader population of Easter Europa is a what 99-99.5 percent white.
So, most of BIPOC are with us!
(fuck no - Indigenous over there are white too... so are they Indigenous or not? What a mess)

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 13:52

To further the above sentiment about the euro nationalist domination in the anarchist movement, i think everyone recognizes that the world is in an extraordinary transformative of phase and the October 7th operation against colonialism is, as of now, the height of the rebellion. In the US and the west in general it's becoming increasingly clear that the anarchist movement, in its last dominant iterations (from say 99-2025) have little or nothing to offer oppressed and colonized people. The reaction by the white anarchist world to a project that highlights other political tendencies in struggle is so resoundingly hostile, is essentially proof that this world is not in solidarity with the real movements of oppressed people, and often actually in active conflict with them. Judging from the real experience and online experience of these spaces it'll prob get worse.

Wayne Price@ (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 15:32

I agree with lumpy.

What I read in Abolition Media's statement is the same sort of uncritical political support for authoritarian revolutionary nationalist groups as appeared in the 60s. In that period, most of those who regarded themselves as revolutionaries looked to Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, or Enver Hoxha as teachers and leaders. After all, Mao, Castro, etc. *were* fighting Western imperialism, in fact. This led to the Weatherpeople, whose (delusional) goal was to overthrow the U.S. population, workers as well as capitalists, and to establish a dictatorship in the service of the oppressed nations. A.M. seems to have similar delusions that a tiny minority in the U.S. can make a revolution through small scale violence, without a mass movement first occurring.

As I see it, the anarchist idea is to support the struggles of oppressed people, including oppressed nations, while opposing statist, nationalist, or reformist programs of their leaderships. In this case, we are on the side of the Palestinian people against the Zionist state, without supporting Hamas or the Iranian ayatollahs. How to do this specifically depends on circumstances. In the U.S., right now, our job is to build as big and militant a pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, movement as possible.

We should not criticize the Palestinians for breaking out of Gaza and fighting with the Israeli army or occupying military or even civilian areas. But it is necessary to also reject the killing of unarmed and nonresistant civilians, even children. While much less than what the Zionists have done, these are still atrocities.

A.M. is for national self-determination of oppressed nations--but not for Ukraine. They are not bothered by right wing authoritarian reactionaries in the oppressed nations--except for Ukraine. They oppose imperialism by the U.S. capitalist state, but not the imperialism of the Russian capitalist state.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 16:44

In reply to by Wayne Price@ (not verified)

Wayne, how can you claim support of the Palestinian people when you've said on this site that Ukrainians have the right to Israeli weapons? This goes against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, not to mention anarchism, since anarchists support national liberation but not the capitalist-militarist arms industries of imperialist states, nor the "right" to volunteer for or be conscripted into an army and be made to use Israeli and American weapons in the way your commanding officer in a state institution orders you to.

Wayne Price@ (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 15:28

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

You ask, "Wayne, how can you claim support of the Palestinian people when you've said on this site that Ukrainians have the right to Israeli weapons?"

An oppressed nation or an oppressed class has the right to get arms from anywhere it can. It is no criticism of the Palestinians that they got arms from the regional sub-imperialist Iranian state, which is theocratic, capitalist, and misogynist. It is not a criticism of the Vietnamese when fighting the U.S. that they got arms from the imperialist state-capitalist Soviet Union. The Ukrainians got arms from NATO and bought them from Israel. This was entirely justified.

You say that "anarchists support national liberation." But you oppose an oppressed and invaded nation getting the arms necessary to fight for their liberation. This is not really supporting national liberation at all.

Of course Ukraine has a capitalist (non-imperialist) economy with a national state, and its government (supported by its people, unfortunately) does support Israel and NATO. But suppose Ukraine was a free commune of communes committed to international revolution? It still would need to get arms from wherever it could get them. If Western imperialists were willing to give it arms (for their own reasons of weakening their imperialist rival Russia), it would be necessary to take those arms--even from Israel if possible. Or they could follow your advice and be defeated but pure!

In the Spanish Revolution/Civil War of the thirties, the anarchists demanded arms from France, Britain, and the U.S., as well as taking them from Russia. The revolutionary left anarchists condemned the mainstream anarchists for joining the Popular Front government with liberals and Stalinists, but not the effort to get arms from other (imperialist) states.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 09:10

In reply to by Wayne Price@ (not verified)

If you think buying arms from Israel is entirely justified, that means you are very much against the national liberation of Palestine. Hope this helps. There is no exception to BDS for a particular nation-state (Ukraine) that Wayne Price happens to fetishize. National liberation, national self-determination is either for all peoples or no peoples, not for Ukrainians only at the expense of Palestinians and other peoples.

You are also anti-anarchist if you argue that states have a right to arms from other states. Anarchists, unlike you, are against states.

That said, the question for anarchists is neither whether we support the rights of states to other states' arms nor whether we criticize the Vietnamese resistance or Spanish anarchists for trying to get arms from states. The question is whether you oppose the arms industries and politics of your own state (America) and its allies (Israel, Ukraine and NATO).

It's good that you make it clear that you do not oppose the arms industries of America or Israel, or the political support those states give to Ukraine (and vice versa) because this definitively proves that you are not an anarchist, for all to see. You say Ukrainians via their state have the "right" to Israeli and American arms via the capitalist-statist system. Which is not the same thing as the "right" to self-determination, which cannot come at the expense of genocide to a people (Palestinians) and still be a principle. You are talking about Ukrainian determination, freedom for the Ukrainian state to be armed by other states, not freedom for all peoples. You oppose BDS and the Palestinian struggle, openly.

You are a statist marxist and genocide apologist and should be denounced as such and no-platformed by the anarchist scene.

Wayne Price@ (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 13:49

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

It must be nice to live in such a simple black-and-white world. If a people is fighting for its very existence, against an enemy which threatens to dissolve its country while killing a great many of its citizens, it must not take arms from Western imperialists or Israeli colonists. That would be impure and immoral! Better the Ukrainians should be destroyed than take guns and rockets from whomever would give it to them (for their own imperialist reasons of course)! Further, if a people is fighting for its life but has a state ruling over it and capitalists exploiting it, then they must not be defended from imperialist aggression. Only a non-state Ukrainian Commune would be worth defending, anything else is being "a statist marxist and genocide apologist." How you would expect to win Ukrainian workers to anarchism, I can't imagine.

I am opposed to the U.S. military-industrial complex (and certainly to that of Israel!). I do not campaign for U.S. aid to Ukraine although I do not campaign against it either. The point is not support to U.S. arms production or to U.S. aid to Ukraine. The point is to defend Ukraine's ability to take arms from wherever they can get them, including NATO. As I wrote, this applies not only to the Ukrainian state but also to a (hypothetical) Ukrainian revolutionary commune, which would also need to get arms from wherever it could.

Your denunciation of me as "a statist marxist and genocide apologist" is so over the bounds that I can only regard it as an authoritarian bias against someone who dares to disagree with you.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 18:32

In reply to by Wayne Price@ (not verified)

It's not actually nice to live in a black and white world where the US and Israel are really committing genocide instead of not really committing genocide, and where I don't have the supposed rights of the Ukrainian state to well-functioning American and Israeli arms industries to justify those genocides in my own chauvinist mind. It's actually really shitty that this is happening and that you justify it with Western campism and moralism that considers Ukrainians to be human and Palestinians (and other Indigenous peoples) to be subhuman.

As the post you were responding to already mentioned (and you ignored), the point for anarchists and other people opposed to genocide of Indigenous peoples is not whether Ukrainians have a non-state commune or not, not whether they have a right to be conscripted by their state and be supplied with American and Israeli weapons or not, not whether we denounce Ukrainians for being in the army or not. The point is what do Americans do in America! What do Israelis do in Israel/Palestine. What do those two imperialist countries do around the world? The point is not do we like Ukrainians or not. The point is do we oppose what imperialists do or not.

It really is black and white, you either oppose American imperialism and militarism or you don't. You don't run the arms industries and government, so you have no say in how they're used. As it stands, they're used to commit genocide, and as someone who claims anarchy, your primary job is to oppose your own state and capitalists, not justify your own state and capitalists because you think Ukrainians are more human than Native peoples.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 18:28

I don't like a few things about kolektiva's approach in general, including their loose alignment with euro anarchist normalcy, but specifically regarding this moderation stuff, they laid out their rationale in a way that was relatively unambiguous, making it simple for someone to agree or disagree in response to specific parts of it. In response, Abolition Media, whose editorial line I also don't like, had a chance to respond to—debunk, if you like—the suggestions that they were doing this or that undesirable thing. Rather than specify where their editorial practice specifically departs from kolektiva's moderation practice, they just reiterated their general line about euro anarchists not being great anticolonialists (sure, true), reposts aren't endorsements, & they're being attacked. They also could've responded to the specific criticisms made in the COLA critique, but again evades that for a general "you don't get it you're censoring is because you're racist" line. tl;dr I didn't like kolektiva's answers but at least they gave me specific things not to like, while Abolition Media more or less deflected.

An example of something they could've specifically & helpfully clarified is their selective republication of the Palestinian armed organizations, as referenced here:

https://xcancel.com/anarchosonic/status/1882173789804568769#m

I think it's fair to guess they didn't republish it because they support Kurdish attacks on Turkey as anticolonial attacks, since they did republish the statement claiming the action:

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/12067/

In other words, they didn't post Hamas simping for Turkey because they don't agree with it. Similarly for their lack of interest in posting (for example) armed actions against the Iranian state, non-Kurdish Syrian revolutionary organizing against the now-defeated Assadist regime, non-fascist Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, & a lot more things left, anarchist, & anti-colonial forces that don't figure into the major armies or ruling powers in these regions are up to. Either they don't consider these groups anti-colonial, they disagree with what they say & refuse to share it for that reason, or both. It would be an excellent chance to correct readers like me who can only make guesses as to what they really believe based on what they choose to publish, knowing that there is no such thing as an editorial perspective which doesn't include some viewpoints while excluding others. They've chosen to hide behind "reposts aren't endorsements" for over a year instead of saying what, if anything, they endorse.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 08:03

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

18:28 thanks for a really good articulation of my thinking as well, allowing me to be lazy and applaud you while i eat breakfast. 

specifically the part where one party expresses their criteria for their behavior, and the other doesn't. even when we dislike both, one has done the work, the other is (at BEST) really not compelling, and at worst demonstrating bad faith, manipulative writing, etc.

agh. crumbs....

Tim Declercq (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 09:54

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"one party expresses their criteria for their behavior"

Criteria are meaningless if not applied consistently. As other commenters here have pointed out, Kolektiva has no issue with posts by Frank Lopez directly calling on people to support Democratic Party control of the US government. Even if Hamas were to slaughter every single trade unionist, revolutionary, and anarchist they could possibly get their hands on they still wouldn't come anywhere close to the same perpetrated by the US government (including under Democrat control) on an almost global scale. And unlike Frank Lopez, Abolition Media isn't directly endorsing Hamas or directly asking people to concretely support them. As such, what Kolektiva has provided aren't criteria for their behaviour but an ad-hoc excuse.

"the other is (at BEST) really not compelling"

The onus for arguing censorship is on the censor, and until the censor does so to a satisfying degree - which Kolektiva has not done - there is no onus on the censored to argue anything at all, compelling or otherwise.

MarkZ (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 07:39

Boycott everything Meta. It's obviously co-opted by the Zionists. You can't have free speech there. Their leader is sieg heiling with other nazis. We have Bluesky. We have Web3 (eg. Nostr). We have Freenet. We have many alternatives.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 08:51

In reply to by MarkZ (not verified)

Too BLUE for me. I'd rather Lemmy or Kolektiva.

I agree with the rest, tho.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/24/2025 - 16:26

this is such an easy litmus test.

censoring accounts of anticolonial resistance to zionism, special israel-only rules that you can't compare the actions that specific genocidal state to nazism.... kolektiva is cooked and so's anyone making excuses for this

TITSmus (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 09:22

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

I like how you use the same 1-2 latin words from your personal glossary just to sound smart where you still aren't due to either bad reading comprehension or dishonest reformulation of Kolektiva's arguments.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 09:55

In reply to by TITSmus (not verified)

lmao where am i wrong, soft-zionist?

am i wrong that kolektiva is censoring the words of those fighting genocide?

am i wrong that kolektiva had a SPECIAL RULE that you couldn't compare israel to nazis?

where am i wrong in explaining why kolektiva is soft-zionist trash

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 15:16

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

LMAO... where is Israel = "Nazis", besides Netanyahu's gang and the rest of the ultra-orthodox scumlords? Are we supposed to believe they're encompassing the entirety of Israelis!?

What if... Palestinians are equally all Islamic ultra-conservatives keeping "their" women at home?

Also are Americans = "Nazis", just because the government is now run by a bunch of White fascist clowns?

Seems like you got a major bias, maybe maybe.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 14:48

average pathetic leftist slapping infighting moment.
you can dislike and criticize nato and ukraines political and economic status and corruption as being part of a larger system of inequality and injustice while still opposing russias atrocities and believing they have no right to come in and claim ukraine for themselves. you can criticize hamas actions and structure and violence and still oppose israels genocide and see resistance against it as being justified (or at the very least justifiable).
you do not need to uncritically support any and all aspects and actions of a resistance to still believe that they are victims of oppression and that resistance against the oppression is needed.
accusing people of smearing you and tossing out of context quotes around while not providing any source for what they actually said doesnt make your account all that believable.

this has some real "but do you condemn zionism!?" energy.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/25/2025 - 15:14

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"average leftist" --pay closer attention, you're trolling an anarchist site not a "leftist" one. nobody here is uncritically supporting iran, assad YPG or anything else.

the issue, which some are curiously eager to distract from, is censorship, in this case censorship that was paired with a strict rule about the ways in which the state of israel may be criticized.

"do you condemn zionism" is, in fact an important question, but not what's at issue here.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/27/2025 - 02:08

what's kind of wild is that every few years the anarchist scene chooses a new section to straw man as "authoritarian communist" or even "fascist" and then you look really closely and it's just basically anyone doing something slightly uncommon or new

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
CAPTCHA
q
E
q
U
h
*
T
Q
Enter the code without spaces.
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.